Judging at the Fair

I was re-reading my original post this afternoon and realize how negative it is. I also received an email from somebody I admire and respect who also pointed out the errors of my way. I realize if any of the participants in the fair read this they would be hurt and I would be embarassed. So, I'm changing the post slightly, and if you were among those who read it earlier, you'll notice a change. If you hadn't read it before, then you won't notice a difference. Here's the new post:

I was asked to judge the photographs at the Madison County Fair. I was happy to do it, even though I knew what I would be subjected to. There were basically a lot of technically inferior, but very enthusiastic snap shots with a few surprising successes crammed onto a pegboard display wall. I then spent the next hour deciding which photograhs were the most deserving of ribbons, and writing comments.

I was most enthusiastic about the children’s work. One series of photographs was called “my new brother” taken by an 8 year old. They were among the greatest baby photographs I’ve seen. Another series of children's photographs was a selection of farm animals (ducks, cows, and the like). These may not have been technically sound, but the subject matter was important to them and it showed. There was a good lightning photograph that won best of show in the amateur category (I’ve never been able to take a successful lightning photograph). There was a beautiful little 5x7 print taken by an amateur of his child playing in the backyard, the good use of color, the innocence of the child on the swing, and the love the photographer must have for the child were evident in the photograph. In spite of the technical shortcomings of some of the photographs most were meaningful, especially to them and it showed in their work.

Occasionally I'll go into a gallery or museum and I'll get motivated by the great work, but I also get a little bit depressed about the quality of my work in comparison. There's nothing quite like viewing the photographs in a small county fair to get you motivated to help the community understand photography and art better. It's also tempting to allow yourself an ego boost. Anyway, I was happy to get involved in the community and had a good time with the photographs. Maybe I'll get to do it again in a few years.

Here's one of the display buildings on the fair grouns:


Madison County Fairgrounds 2005

Website Updates

As mentioned in previous posts, I've been exploring lava tubes north of Rexburg, Idaho this summer. I've managed to get enough of them together to create a gallery on my website. The layout looks fine. However, some of the titles need a little work. I need to meet with somebody from the BLM to find out the names of the tubes. Most of the titles are made up names. I had sort of thought about titling them according to GPS coordinates, but most of the better known caves are vandalized. I didn't want to contribute to the mess and damage. Go here to view the gallery of photographs. If you're too lazy or uninterested to do that, enjoy this image:


Bones, Long Cave, Fremont County, ID 2005

Flying Ants

Jon and I have been looking on topographic maps and found some caves labeled not far from where we'd already been. Yesterday we drove out to locate and photograph them. Most of the caves were fairly small and uninteresting. We did find one cool cave. It was fairly big and still held ice. The entrance was lined with ferns and moss. We photographed there for a while and it was great.

However, the entire time we were out we were contending with a plague of flying ants of biblical proportions. Our first stop was a small depression near the main road that looked like it might be a cave. It wasn't and on the way back to the car we were getting swarmed by flying ants. I assumed we had just disturbed a nest or something. Our next stop was a big volcanic crater on the top of a rise, it too held ants. We made several more stops and the ants were worse at every stop. There must have been over 10,000 swarming Jon's truck after a prolonged stop at one cave. After finding all of the caves on the map we took what we thought was a dirt road that connected with the main road, after a while it petered out into a cow trail through the sage and rocks and ended at an impassable fence a few hundred yards from the main road. So, we backtracked for 45 minutes and came home. It was a weird day, but still great to be out. Here are some images of the plague:


Flying Ants on the Windshield


Flying Ants on Jon's Truck


Flying Ants Collected from Jon's Truck


Flying Ants Swarming Jon

Fall Migration

I've managed to do a little birding the last two or three days. Fall migration for shorebirds has been going strong for a while now and songbird migration is just getting started.

I've discovered a nice little shorebird pond near Rexburg, with the price of gas it's nice to have a place close. I've seen ca. 16 species of shorebirds in the pond this fall. The most unusual being Semipalmated Plover, Semipalmated Sandpiper, Red-necked Phalarope, and Baird's Sandpiper (none of these are especially rare, but they are good birds for Madison County). On Thursday I was there and had a cool experience. I was watching a flock of Sandpipers when they all took off, with the exception of an Avocet. Anytime this happens it's a good bet there's a Peregrine Falcon in the area. I looked up and saw a young Peregrine chasing a Baird's Sandpiper. It escaped and the falcon then turned its attention to the Avocet sitting in the pond. It dive-bombed it 4-5 times. When it did the Avocet would squat down in the water with a splash. The Peregine finally gave up and took off. That was great.

Today I went out to Camas NWR, an oasis with wetlands, cottonwoods, willows, and russian olives out in the middle of the sage-brush desert. It's got a good track record of producing some amazing birds. This fall a crew from the Idaho Bird Observatory is banding birds. I didn't think it would bother me that much, but it wasn't as enjoyable as usual seeing birds hanging in the nets waiting to be weighed, sexed, banded, and eventually released. The research they are doing will hopefully lead to more funds for the refuge, but it's pretty invasive. Anyway, here are some sort of disturbing pictures for your viewing.


Clockwise from the upper left:
MacGillivray's Warbler, Empidonax Flycatcher, Yellow Warbler, Wilson's Warbler

Cave Photography and Horny Toad

Well, Jon, his wife Kristi, and a former student of mine Andy went out photographing caves again yesterday. Just when I think I'm finished with this project we find more and better caves. They are really remarkable, and they exist in such a bleak landscape. Anyway, we found a cave that is over a mile long with several side chambers and multiple openings. Bats seem to be attracted to our lights, or our heat, or our carbon dioxide or something. They fly straight at you and turn away at the last second and I scream like a little girl. It was really great yesterday being with friends and experiencing this place. Here's a photograph of Jon and Andy photographing the cave entrance at sunset.

Jon and Andy Photographing at Sunset

The plants and animals associated with the caves are pretty interesting. There are ferns, raspberry bushes, small aspens, moss, mushrooms, stinging nettle, and other plants I don't know at the entrances to these caves. This is quite a contrast to the surrounding landscape of sage, grass, and prickly pear cactus. There are also pack rats, bats, sage grouse, cliff swallows, numerous sparrows, hawks, weasels, butterflies, moths,and gopher snakes among other animals. Those of you that know me know of my interest in, fascination of, and obsession with reptiles, especially when I was younger. Anyway, I keep hoping to find a rattlesnake out near the caves, but we haven't yet. I did, however find a Short-horned Lizard (horny toad) out there yesterday. This is the first one I've ever seen, even though they are quite common. Here's a link about Short-horned Lizards. Anyway enjoy this image I've rambled on enough.

Short-horned Lizard in my Hand

Volcano and Dinosaurs

Like most children, Kevin likes dinosaurs and everything associated with them, including Volcanoes. I guess there are probably as many volcanoes today as there were back then? I don't know. Either way, he and Tracie made a volcano out of an old vase and salt clay. It took four days for the clay to dry, but this afternoon it was ready. Tracie helped Kevin and Ethan make it explode (explode might be a little of an exaggeration, but fizzy liquid came out of the top) using red food coloring, vinegar, and baking soda. It was pretty cool. Then they brought in the dinosaurs, and caused their extinction.

more caves and a great sky

Jon and I went out to the ice caves again last night. I've really had fun exploring and photographing these caves this summer. It will be in the 90s outside and in the 40s in the caves. It's really quite a contrast. Anyway, I was playing around with the digital camera and artificial light, I'm not sure I will do much more with artificial light, but it was interesting to compare the results.


Worm Tunnel, photographed with natural light

Worm Tunnel, photographed with natural and artificial light

After we emerged from the caves a storm approached and the sunset was incredible and a bit scary. Here are a couple of digital snapshots.



Sunset with Approaching Storm

p.s.
Jon and Kristy came over tonight and I beat them in basketball again. It's getting embarrassing.

Swallow Nests

I took a little drive this evening after my Sunday nap. My intent was to do a little birding and photographing, depending on which worked out best. I sort of managed to do both at once for a change.

Bank Swallows usually nest in river banks and other vertical surfaces with soft enough soil to excavate. Here they took advantage of a similar, though man-made situation.

Bank Swallow Nests in Gravel Pile, Roberts, ID

Cliff Swallows create mud nests and traditionally attatched them on cliff faces to guard against predators. They are now most commonly found attatched to the underside of bridges. Here, however is a traditional examaple.

Cliff Swallow Nests, Annis Butte, ID

Scout Camp and Dominoes

Thursday night I went up to Scout Camp to help out the leaders of our troop and visit the boys. We were having a really great time until we found out some tragic news. Gabe, one of the boys in the troop was there and having a really good time. He had almost earned ten merit badges and was getting along well with everybody. His father is a doctor in Rexburg and is an avid outdoorsman and is involved in everything from skiing to scubadiving to gliding. Thursday afternoon Gabe's Father was flying his glider plane in Driggs, as he came in for a landing he crashed and died.

Our Bishop and Gabe's Mother came up to break the news to Gabe. We took the boys the other direction to the lake in order to give Gabe some privacy. Afterwards Gabe came down to the lake and was in fairly decent spirits (I assume he wasn't able to process everything). He was planning on staying the night and wanted to tell the boys himself. After a couple of hours however, he decided he needed to go home. After he and one of the leaders left we broke the news to the other boys in the troop. It was difficult and painful and strange and spiritual. The boys had mixed reactions, but their love and concern for Gabe was apparent.

That night we sat around the fire in silence for a while. The silence was finally broken as some of us shared our thoughts. We finally went to bed pretty late. The next morning the mood in camp had shifted. There was still a bit of sadness, but the boys were back to throwing things and telling funny (if not somewhat inappropriate) jokes and stories. I left mid-morning and it was an experience I'll always remember.

On a lighter note: That night Jon and Kristy came over to play basketball and dominoes with Susan and me. I won every game of horse, but I got beaten badly at dominoes. Here's a robot we made out of dominoes after the game.

DOMINOBOT2005

Three Yard Scenes

Tonight was the Rexburg International Dance Festival parade and street party. Susan guilted me into going (she'll deny it, but it's true). The kids had fun, and it was nice to be part of a community event. Dancers from Costa Rica, Mongolia, China, Hungary, Bulgaria, Israel, Mexico, and some jump ropers from Rexburg (they seemed a little out of place) participated in the parade. Anyway, on the walk home I photographed with the digital camera a bit.

When I arrived home I found three unrelated but intriguing scenes awaiting me in the yard.

Scene #1

A few years ago we were at my parent's home in Salt Lake City celebrating Kevin's birthday. His Aunt Sharon and Uncle Richard gave him a skateboard. After the party Kevin and I went outside to play with his new toy. I held his hands and walked him down the driveway. He went limp, I picked him up, we lost our balance, and I broke my elbow. It hurt really bad. Anyway, I found that same skateboard with an axe lying next to it in the driveway when I got home this evening. I served as an effective reminder and warning.

Scene #2

Our neighbors have a bunny that's figured out how to escape from their yard. It seems to like our yard better than theirs. It hangs out in the garden (of course). We've never seen it eat anything but weeds though. This may be the first cute photograph I've made of an animal, which is a bit unlike this or this. I may have to change my approach.

Scene #3

We have an apricot tree in our backyard. Last year we got enough apricots to make a batch of jam, which turned out pretty good. I knew we had a few apricots on the tree this year, and have been anxious for them to ripen. I guess I hadn't been out in the backyard for a few days, because when I went out this evening it seems half of the apricots have ripened and fell off the tree. I guess I'll have to get out and pick them tomorrow, unless Susan beats me to them.